income gap – Macleans.cahttp://www.macleans.ca
Canada's national weekly current affairs magazineSat, 10 Dec 2016 00:57:47 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.2Ask for that raise, and ye shall receivehttp://www.macleans.ca/work/ask-for-that-raise-and-ye-shall-receive/
http://www.macleans.ca/work/ask-for-that-raise-and-ye-shall-receive/#commentsSat, 08 Feb 2014 14:30:24 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=503477When it comes to negotiating for a raise, women can be their own worst enemies

Sara Laschever is the co-author of two books on why women are such lousy negotiators. It’s a problem that she says translates into lower wages and fewer career opportunities. She is touring Canada as part of a series of negotiating workshops organized by women’s mentoring program Lillith Professional. She offers her tips on how women can get up the nerve to ask for more.

Q: How significant of an issue is it for women that they’re not good at negotiating?

A: It is huge. Simply not negotiating your salary for your first job can translate into a loss of at least half a million dollars over the course of your career. In most fields, whatever raise you get every year is predicated on what you made before. If you start lower, the gap between what you are making, and what the person that negotiated and started a little higher makes, widens very dramatically. This is just one negotiation. The woman who doesn’t negotiate her first job offer is much less likely to negotiate successive raises or salaries if she changes jobs. That half-million dollar figure is actually really conservative.

Q: A lot of people say this is really about blaming women for not getting ahead in a man’s world.

A: It is a socially constructed problem. We teach girls very explicitly from the time that they are very, very young not to ask. We socialize girls to be cheerful and good natured and pleasant and compliant. We teach boys to be focused on promoting their own interests, where they are their own agents. When women didn’t work outside the home, socializing girls to be communal and focused on the needs of others was an adaptive strategy for us as a species. But it doesn’t work so well now that so many families depend on two incomes.

Q: You say that women today think this was really a problem for previous generations but that it’s actually more of a problem for younger women.

A: A lot of women think that those battles have been won—that because of the changing culture of school, they feel powerful in the way that it works very well in school. But they are really unprepared for the ways in which the culture of work has not changed. It’s a message I would really like to get out to younger women, because they really are not prepared for what the world of work is like.

Q: Women lose out by not negotiating, but do they also lose out by negotiating too aggressively?

A: That is true. There is plenty of research showing that if women are perceived as boasting or bragging about themselves, that makes them less likeable. So the way in which you ask is critically important. I urge women to role play beforehand with a colleague and friend they trust and ask for feedback. Practice being upbeat and cheerful, non-threatening, and ask friends, “Tell me what I’m doing that may be undercutting that impression?” Do something beforehand that helps you get into that good, relaxed mood. If endorphins work for you, go for a run beforehand, take a quick shower, put on your suit, and walk in kind of relaxed and smiling. If you are someone who meditates or does yoga, schedule the negotiation for after lunch, take a break at lunch and do whatever makes you feel relaxed. Maybe have lunch with a bunch of friends who make you feel funny and charming.

Q: What else should women do to prepare for a negotiation?

A: Assume that everything is negotiable. One reason women don’t ask for more is that they don’t realize all the things that are up for grabs. Do your legwork. What are other people who have your skills, experience and talents getting in terms of compensation packages but also in terms of opportunities? Women also tend to aim too low. Men’s targets going into a negotiation are typically about 30 per cent higher than women’s. So do your research and aim for the top of whatever that range is. You are going to get pushed down in the negotiation anyway, so aim high.

Q: We often hear that men are promoted based on potential, but women are promoted based on their past achievements. How should they address this in negotiations?

A: Collect a detailed dossier to take with you of your accomplishments. We often assume that everybody else knows all of the stuff that we have done. Even if you don’t need to use it, it is very empowering to have it with you. Also, try to find a location that doesn’t emphasize status differences, the boss behind the huge desk, you in a little chair. Try to find a space side-by-side in a conference room or somewhere where collegiality is enforced on the environment.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/work/ask-for-that-raise-and-ye-shall-receive/feed/5Richest 1 per cent of Americans collected a record share of household income in 2012http://www.macleans.ca/general/richest-1-per-cent-of-americans-collected-a-record-share-of-household-income-in-2012/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/richest-1-per-cent-of-americans-collected-a-record-share-of-household-income-in-2012/#respondTue, 10 Sep 2013 15:16:19 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=420761WASHINGTON – The income gap between the richest 1 per cent and the rest of America widened to a record last year.
The top 1 per cent of U.S. earners…

]]>WASHINGTON – The income gap between the richest 1 per cent and the rest of America widened to a record last year.

The top 1 per cent of U.S. earners collected 19.3 per cent of household income in 2012, their largest share in Internal Revenue Service figures going back a century.

U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. But until last year, the top 1 per cent’s share of pre-tax income had not yet surpassed the 18.7 per cent it reached in 1927, according to an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.

One of them, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, said the incomes of the richest Americans might have surged last year in part because they cashed in stock holdings to avoid higher capital gains taxes that took effect in January.

Last year, the incomes of the top 1 per cent rose 19.6 per cent compared with a 1 per cent increase for the remaining 99 per cent.

The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. Their incomes fell more than 36 per cent in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 as stock prices plummeted. Incomes for the bottom 99 per cent fell just 11.6 per cent, according to the analysis.

But since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 per cent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 per cent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 per cent.

That compares with a 45 per cent share for the top 1 per cent in the economic expansion of the 1990s and a 65 per cent share from the expansion that followed the 2001 recession.

The top 10 per cent haven’t done badly, either. Last year, they captured 48.2 per cent of income, another record. Their biggest previous take was 46.3 per cent in 1932.

The top 1 per cent of American households had income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 per cent had income exceeding $114,000.

The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so-called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/richest-1-per-cent-of-americans-collected-a-record-share-of-household-income-in-2012/feed/0Richest one per cent earn a tenth of all income: StatsCanhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/richest-one-per-cent-earn-a-tenth-of-all-income-statscan/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/richest-one-per-cent-earn-a-tenth-of-all-income-statscan/#commentsMon, 28 Jan 2013 14:48:23 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=343432OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the top one per cent of the country’s 25.5 million tax filers accounted for 10.6 per cent of the nation’s total income in 2010, down…

]]>OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the top one per cent of the country’s 25.5 million tax filers accounted for 10.6 per cent of the nation’s total income in 2010, down from a peak of 12.1 per cent in 2006.

However, that top one per cent also paid 21.2 per cent of all federal and provincial or territorial income taxes, down from the peak of 23.3 per cent in 2007.

In 2010, a tax filer required an annual income of $201,400 to be in the top one per cent, up from $147,500 in 1982.

The income gap between the top one per cent and the rest of filers has widened over time, calculated in 2010 constant dollars.

In 1982, the median income of the top filers was $191,600 or seven times the median income of $28,000 for the other 99 per cent.

By 2010, the median income of the top filers increased to $283,400, about 10 times the median income of $28,400 for the rest.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/richest-one-per-cent-earn-a-tenth-of-all-income-statscan/feed/3The graduate’s million-dollar promisehttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-million-dollar-promise/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-million-dollar-promise/#commentsWed, 16 Jan 2013 14:40:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=335093A university degree was once a guarantee of higher incomes. Those days are gone, argue two profs

The message to young people is simple. If you want an extra million dollars, maybe more, just get a university degree. Your lifetime earnings will be at least that much more than those of someone with only a high school education. Or so says the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), quoting the 2006 census.

The university establishment does not lack confidence on this matter. In September 2012, Paul Davidson, president of the AUCC, quoted a more impressive statistic: “While it is true that tuition has increased in recent years, so too has the value of a degree. The income premium of a university degree is large and growing. University graduates will on average earn $1.3 million more during their careers than a high school graduate and $1 million more than a college grad.”

This number—the $1-million promise—has been around for quite some time, pretty much unchallenged. It is time to pose some simple questions about it. Do university graduates actually earn $1.3 million more than high school graduates? If you assume a working career of 40 years—ages 26 to 65—the return represents a $32,500 annual “bonus” over the earnings of a high school graduate, and $25,000 over a college graduate’s. Is the university degree the critical factor in determining the extra income earned by degree holders? Does the field of study matter?

For parents planning their children’s future and for young adults contemplating their career options, the million-dollar promise is extremely attractive. It is not just the money; it is also the implied guarantee of a place in the Canadian middle class. The implicit message is that university graduates will not have to drive a bus or staff an assembly line. Most Canadian parents want their children to have white-collar office positions, not the kind of resource-based or industrial jobs for which there is still a strong demand.

But is the million-dollar promise something students can bank on, or is it misleading? University graduates as a group will indeed earn more than those without degrees. But if you ask if an individual student will make this much more money, the answer is a resounding “maybe.” The averages are accurate. But the number applies to all university graduates, everyone from medical doctors, chemical engineers and accountants to—whom shall we pick?—graduates in cultural studies, arts, or biology. Some lawyers, for example, make $1.3 million in a couple of years, not 40. As many university graduates have learned to their dismay, the university degree that leads to prosperity can also lead to unemployment, a string of part-time jobs or, more common in current economic times, underemployment—a low-paid, low-skilled position at $30,000 a year, barely above the average for high school graduates. Averages are just averages.

Here’s a personal example of what we mean. Bill Morrison, who co-wrote this story, spent more than 40 years as a university teacher and administrator. After 35 years, his salary was about $120,000, an impressive sum. His son-in-law Jeremy, a high school graduate, is a heavy-duty mechanic with on-the-job apprenticeship training who works for Finning, the big Canadian firm that services heavy machinery. Three or four years ago, Jeremy’s salary was $5,000 higher, due to overtime, than Bill’s. Bill was then 65, started his university position in his late twenties, and held three degrees. Jeremy’s starting salary was around $75,000, not bad for a young man in his twenties holding no degrees. People with Ph.D.s lucky enough to find a permanent university position begin at about the same salary. Both Bill and Jeremy love what they are doing, but using expected income as a reason to take a university degree is misleading.

This reality does not deter universities. The $1-million promise shows up prominently in university promotional materials and recruiters’ presentations. The University of Victoria’s website, for example, cites the AUCC study and provides supporting graphs, summarizing the likely outcomes: $35,000 in average incomes for college graduates, $45,000 for bachelor’s graduates, $60,000 for master’s graduates, and $65,000 for doctoral graduates. The steady progression is a huge incentive to stay the course and stick with university, continuing to second and third degrees.

University degrees are in many ways a wonderful investment. Four years of advanced study by motivated and intelligent students provides a terrific opportunity for personal growth. Learning for the sake of learning has great merit, both for the individual and for society at large. The problem arises with the reason why students go to university. If it is to broaden their horizons, learn a skill useful to humanity, or steep themselves in knowledge, then the decision is a fine one. If the motive is money, students may be setting themselves up for serious disappointment.

Not only is focusing on money the wrong basis on which to make a decision about attending university, it sheds light on a serious weakness in the rationale: the idea that most worthwhile jobs require a university degree. Canada has massive shortages in the skilled trades. We are trying to import thousands of technical workers, some from places as far afield as Romania. Meanwhile, many people with undergraduate arts and science degrees, who used to find jobs in government offices, banks and corporate middle management, struggle to land decent-paying jobs, let alone ones with a promising career path.

Another issue is student debt. About 60 per cent of all graduating students carry debt, and the average amount owed is $24,600. Imagine a worst-case scenario, in which a student takes more than four years to graduate, and accumulates a debt of $40,000, only to find herself underemployed as a barista, making $25,000 a year. What is the return on her investment in the first 10 years after graduation?

Career prospects and incomes for university graduates vary. While employment prospects in some fields are terrific—nanotechnologists, economists, nurses and other professionals have impressive career possibilities—the same is not necessarily true for other academic programs. Competitive-entry, high-quality programs, such as an M.B.A. from an elite school, or a medical degree, offer an impressive return on investment; others do not. It helps to look at the numbers. The latest available are from the 2006 census and were crunched by the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at McMaster University. They show that the average income for university graduates aged 26 to 35 was $42,176, a decent sum, but not what most university students expect to be earning a decade after they graduate. A closer examination reveals the problem with such generalizations. Using the same data, a female English undergraduate degree holder earned $30,762, well above the $19,000 of a female high school graduate, but below the $32,343 earned by male high school graduates. The numbers for film studies majors were lower, $26,172 for men and $25,447 for women. Lower still were music graduates, at $19,348 and $20,814. Even science graduates don’t do as well as most people imagine. Physics graduates earned $40,216 for men and $31,545 for women. Contrast these numbers with the much higher wages for civil engineering ($60,000 for males, $49,924 for females), business administration ($48,405 and $39,295), finance ($55,919 and $42,182), nursing ($53,764 and $47,985), law ($56,975 and $50,000) and pharmacy ($88,425 and $71,493). While gender is obviously important, degree choice can matter as much as the decision to go to university in the first place.

Think about these figures for a moment. Are music graduates going to make $1.3 million more over their careers than unionized construction workers? Obviously not and, of course, no one gets a university degree in music for the money. For a musician, the million-dollar promise is irrelevant as well as false. Musicians do what they love to do, and we are the better for it.

In the current economic situation, prospective teachers need a similar passion for teaching, because many may not be able to make much money at it. Consider the situation facing newly minted teachers. Entry to a teachers’ college is highly competitive, for teaching holds the prospect of a solid, well-paid, middle-class life. But demographic shifts have resulted in the closure of schools and a great reduction in the number of teachers. According to the Ontario College of Teachers, just under a third of the 2010 graduating class was unemployed the following year. And almost half of the graduates described themselves as underemployed, with only supply teaching or a non-teaching job. The Ontario government responded by reducing the number of spots in education programs, and even contemplated the odd step of doubling the length of the teacher-education programs. The graduates who do get full-time teaching positions will have stable incomes; many others face uncertainty, short-term positions and a much lower-than-expected income.

The prospect for academic success—defined as completing a degree—is another factor to consider when assessing the net value of attending university. Close to one-quarter of first-year students fail. As many as a third do not finish their degrees. This is partly because, as universities scramble to pay their bills and meet government and public demands for wider accessibility, admission standards have dropped, a fact masked by the inflation in high school grades. The $1-million promise applies only to people who graduate. If the incomes of everyone who ever enrolled in university were included in the calculation, the $1-million gap would undoubtedly shrivel dramatically.

Traditionally, bachelor of arts and bachelor of science graduates started their careers at a lower salary than applied science and professional university graduates, but caught up by mid-career. They did so because of the uniformly high general skill level of B.A. and B.Sc. graduates and the small number of such graduates relative to the size of the then-expanding Canadian middle class. According to research on the experience of B.A. graduates conducted by John Goyder, past president of the Canadian Sociological Association, this advantage has eroded. For instance, with business schools producing thousands of graduates each year for middle-management positions, and with the relative number of those positions falling, the growing legion of B.A. and B.Sc. graduates find fewer opportunities. The $1-million promise worked for university graduates in the 1960s and 1970s—people now at the peak of their earning potential. But, as Goyder’s work shows, it does not appear to be working in the 21st century. Indeed, underemployment is becoming more common among university graduates, particularly for those without a specialized or professional degree.

More distressing, and here we rely on American studies, there is evidence that the intellectual benefits of a degree have been overhyped. When universities complain about worsening student-to-faculty ratios, huge first-year classes and limited student-faculty interaction, it follows that many students are not getting the personalized attention needed to remedy their shortcomings and to capitalize on the intellectual and skills benefits of an undergraduate education. In their provocative 2011 book, Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa demonstrate that university students in the U.S. show very little progress in critical thinking and core intellectual development. This indictment, they say, strikes at the very heart of the university enterprise. Rather than guaranteeing that a university graduate has sophisticated critical thinking, writing and analytical abilities, institutions can say only that undergraduates and graduates in the non-professional fields had the opportunity to gain these crucial career-ready skills.

In reality, a major factor in predicting future earnings and career success is family background. Many of the students going to Canadian universities come from wealthier, better-educated families. Parental income is a key indicator of the academic progress and career earnings of offspring. Research in the U.S. shows that a substantial portion of the income boost connected to a university degree is due in fact to a combination of personal qualities and family background, assisted by the university education. Smart, hard-working, well-connected young people from well-off families will do well, despite their educational background.

Parental income aside, talent and character are probably as good predictors of future success as is a university degree. University graduates should be compared, not to high school graduates, but to young people who could have gone to university but did not. Comparing these cohorts would produce a more useful indication of the actual career value of a university degree. A U.S. study that compared high school graduates who attended Ivy League schools with those accepted to these institutions, but who did not go, showed that these expensive institutions added little to the career or earning experience of their students. Talent, not a diploma, wins out in the end. Furthermore, a substantial number of students with a high school diploma are not capable of attending university successfully. So, why do universities compare their graduates to them?

It is quite possible that the long period in which universities enjoyed unquestioning public support and generous public subsidies may be coming to an end. Canadian universities have done well since the 1950s, a period when governments provided billions for research and new facilities. Enrolment soared and tuition rates climbed faster than inflation.

While universities wanted to believe that the spike in enrolment sprang from government and public commitment to the value of learning and the preparation of an educated citizenry, most everyone knew this was not the real motivation. The core rationale was much more basic: university graduates supposedly got better jobs and higher incomes. Even better, the high-income university graduates paid more taxes, thus repaying the state’s investment.

If universities were honest about the question of career opportunities and income, they would say this: “The top performing students, particularly those in high-demand technical and professional fields, have very good employment prospects and will likely make impressive incomes. Students in more general areas of study and, particularly, those who fall short in skill level, motivation and work ethic, will likely struggle after graduation. Many students will, if academically capable, have to continue to an advanced degree; a growing number will have to continue their studies at a community college in order to prepare for the workforce. Plan accordingly.”

One of the sadder aspects of the overselling of a university education is the deprecation of a community college and technical education. In the public’s mind, going to university holds great promise; college is second-best. The implication is that talented young people go to university and the less able attend college. This was never entirely true, but is much less so now. Canada has an impressive network of community colleges, one of the best in the world.

For those ready for the challenge and the opportunity, university remains a special and wonderful option. If they are young adults of broad curiosity, comfortable in the world of ideas and discovery, and want to explore the depth and breadth of the academy, then they are truly welcome on any campus. They will leave richer for the university experience, whatever their later income may be. But getting a degree without paying close attention to career aspirations—through co-op programs, proper summer jobs and volunteer activity—is a recipe for post-graduation disappointment. Students need to start their academic careers by: doing careful research about the Canadian workforce; carefully choosing their institutions and programs of study; and reflecting carefully on their reasons for attending university. They must also be willing to commit to the demanding and intense university work required of devoted students. The intellectual and personal benefits of a university degree are there for all students who truly want them. Just don’t count on that million-dollar bonus.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-million-dollar-promise/feed/15Income inequality steady by one measure, absolute gains tell another storyhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/income-inequality-steady-by-one-measure-absolute-gains-tell-another-story/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/income-inequality-steady-by-one-measure-absolute-gains-tell-another-story/#respondTue, 11 Dec 2012 21:27:33 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=326859Income inequality in Canada has remained steady since 1998 according to the traditional benchmark, but absolute dollar gains by the country’s highest earners have far outstripped the gains by those…

]]>Income inequality in Canada has remained steady since 1998 according to the traditional benchmark, but absolute dollar gains by the country’s highest earners have far outstripped the gains by those at the bottom, a report by TD Bank said Tuesday.

Even though the poorest saw a slightly larger percentage gain in income, absolute gains — the amount of dollars in a person’s pocket — tell a different story, said TD Bank chief economist Craig Alexander.

“Although the traditional benchmark of income inequality isn’t showing an increase, the absolute levels of income matter enormously,” he said.

After a 20 per cent increase, the after-inflation level of income of those in the bottom 20 per cent increased to only $15,200 in 2010 from $12,700 in 1998.

Meanwhile, at the high end of the income scale, the top 20 per cent have seen an 18 per cent increase in income since 1998, but that translates into $26,700 to bring their income to $171,900.

“So part of the issue around income inequality is the fact that households at the low end of the income scale have extremely absolute low levels of income and that’s a major challenge,” Alexander said.

And he points out, those in the middle of the range have seen the slowest pace of increases as the downward pressure on jobs and wages in the manufacturing sector has weighed on growth.

Alexander said within the middle group there was likely a range of experiences depending on what sector individuals worked.

“The recession has concentrated in the manufacturing sector. We lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and a lot of those manufacturing jobs would have been in the middle income category,” he said.

“However we also had a lot of public employment growth in public administration, education and in health care which are good paying high-quality jobs and I think in those areas we probably had significant gains in middle income.”

The report says the gap between rich and poor increased in the 1990s as governments worked to balance their budgets, but since then has held steady. The results compared with growing income inequality in the U.S. which has seen its middle class eroded over the last two decades.

The financial crisis in the U.S. pushed the median household income south of the border to a 16-year low, while in Canada, the relative economic strength, has helped push the country past our neighbour.

A report last year by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development urged governments to do more to address the gap between rich and poor in Canada by fostering more and better jobs and even considering raising taxes.

The OECD found the main driver behind rising income gaps has been that high-skilled workers have benefited more from technological progress than the low-skilled.

Income inequality is measured by economists using the Gini coefficient. A score of zero means perfect equality, while a score of one means a country’s entire national income is earned by just one person.

However, Alexander said the coefficient misses some key things as it measures income instead of wealth and may not fully reflect the growth in income by the very richest of Canadians as it is based on survey-based income data.

“Income inequality according to the traditional economic benchmark does not show an increasing problem in Canada, but that doesn’t say that there isn’t a problem. It just says the problem has actually deteriorated,” he said.

“What we need to do is make sure kids from low-income backgrounds have the same opportunities as kids from high-income backgrounds.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/income-inequality-steady-by-one-measure-absolute-gains-tell-another-story/feed/0Inequality in America: escalating fasthttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/unequal-superpowers/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/unequal-superpowers/#commentsFri, 12 Oct 2012 18:35:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=302192The income gap in the U.S. may now be more severe than it is in China

]]>“High-income people are doing just fine in this economy,” said Mitt Romney in last week’s U.S. presidential debate. They certainly are. Recent data shows income inequality in America is escalating fast. The income gap, according to new Census Bureau estimates, reached a four-decade high in 2011. The Gini coefficient, a widely used index to gauge wealth distribution, hit 0.47 (zero represents equality, and one represents extreme inequality). The census reports that 1.2 million households in the top one per cent saw an increase of 5.5 per cent in earnings last year, while the 96 million households in the bottom 80 per cent saw a decline of 1.7 per cent in earnings.

Income inequality in the U.S. may now be more severe than it is in China, where the Gini coefficient was calculated at 0.438 in 2010. That figure showed only a slight increase from its 2005 level of 0.425. Observers say this finding suggests the country’s income gap may be stabilizing (though the number is controversial, as the wealthy in China are often reticent to disclose household incomes).

Regardless which country is better or worse, Gini coefficient levels in both China and the U.S. have risen past what the UN calls the “danger level” of 0.40.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/unequal-superpowers/feed/1The rich keep getting richer. Should we be worried?http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/the-rich-keep-getting-richer-should-we-be-worried/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/the-rich-keep-getting-richer-should-we-be-worried/#commentsThu, 05 May 2011 21:41:23 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=190339A new OECD report takes on the widening income gap

That the gap between rich and poor has been widening in the U.S. and Britain is old news. What’s new, according to a recent OECD report (PDF), is that in the last 30 years the income gap has been growing even faster in unlikely places: Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Despite their notoriously generous welfare systems, the three have seen the split between top and bottom incomes grow faster than anywhere else in the OECD in the past decade. (Canada also registered a sizable increase in its Gini coefficient, the standard measure of income inequality.)

So why are the rich doing disproportionately better than everyone else? The report highlights an interesting trio of possible causes:

(a) Freer trade is pushing up the wages of skilled workers. This what trade theory predicts will happen in rich countries with increased trade integration. Technological progress is having a similar effect, putting a premium on education and skills, and making many low-skill jobs obsolete.

(b) Rich people are marrying rich people, thus significantly increasing the wealth of households in the top income bracket. In other words, doctors are marrying doctors—not nurses—and lawyers other lawyers—not housewives. I wonder if this is a bizarre side effect of women’s emancipation.

(c) Across the board, governments have been withdrawing from the markets, leading to lower minimum wages compared to average wages, sinking union membership, and fewer state-owned enterprises. Though these changes raised employment levels, they also likely weakened the redistributive mechanisms that used to restrain the gap between rich and poor.

The OECD says it will produce a more in-depth study to look at these factors, and how much they actually contributed to accelerating inequality. In the meantime, the new findings make for the topic of an interesting debate over whether the best way to tackle inequality is shutting our borders or thinking up a new and better way to ensure that the wealth actually trickles down.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/the-rich-keep-getting-richer-should-we-be-worried/feed/132Oily duck, Tasered pork, and apple crumble for deserthttp://www.macleans.ca/general/oily-duck-tasered-pork-and-apple-crumble-for-desert/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/oily-duck-tasered-pork-and-apple-crumble-for-desert/#respondTue, 06 May 2008 17:25:23 +0000http://macleans.wordpress.com/?p=763Must-reads: Don Martin on the world’s most famous dead ducks;Greg Weston on election financing; Terence Corcoran on the StatsCan war.Ottawa wants a new drug
The capital is relatively…

Ottawa wants a new drug
The capital is relatively quiet, but the pundits are vexed over heroin, statistical tomfoolery, the quietness itself, Gordon O’Connor (remember him?) and, of course, the old in-and-out.

TheGlobe and Mail‘s Margaret Wente deems the credentials of Tony Clement’s Insite panel “irreproachable,” saying “they don’t seem to have an axe to grind.” But while their report has been hailed as a vindication of the Vancouver safe-injection site, Wente believes its findings are “at best mixed.” She seems to mean it’s a mixture of the positive (it has prevented some overdose deaths and “increased access to detox and treatment”) with the inconclusive (nobody knows how many deaths or how much of an increase). It’s a little weird that she would consider Insite’s limited reach—it “accounts for less than 5 per cent of all injections in the Downtown Eastside”—a potential negative rather than grounds for expansion, especially since she declares herself a pragmatist when it comes to drugs. Which is bloody odd itself, considering her nonsensical stance on marijuana.

In the Financial Post, Terence Corcoran launches a withering attack on the Canadian media for going crazy over one Statistics Canada release showing that lower- and middle-class individuals’ earnings have stagnated over the past quarter century, and completely ignoring another release, mere days later, showing that total family incomes have risen considerably over the same period.

John Ivison files what could pass as his resignation from political punditry, decrying in the National Post that empty legislative agenda and the complete disappearance of election fever, and swiping as per usual at Stéphane Dion as he goes. This column does represent Ivison’s long-awaited follow-up to his famous dismissal of what would become the in-and-out affair, however, as “an eye-glazingly complicated tale that has failed to gain any traction in the national media.” His take, seven months on? Remarkably, it’s pretty much the same. “The Liberal quest for scandal has produced more dead ducks than a toxic Alberta tailings pond.” (More on that below.)

The Toronto Star‘s James Travers again flirts with unreadability, which is unfortunate, since the column is just a bog-standard jab at the Conservative paranoia machine. “Core Conservatives [are] comfortable in their suspension of disbelief,” he argues. “They are convinced,” for example, “that independent watchdogs are happiest when biting the hand that feeds them bark loudest at these ruling strangers.” We have no idea what that means. And it all begins with an attack on Gordon O’Connor for his handling of the online tax return filing fiasco that reads as if the first three paragraphs are missing. What, exactly, was wrong with extending the filing deadline but not the payment deadline? Travers offers us no clue.

With questions now arising over the Conservatives’ accounting practices with regard to polling expenses, Sun Media’s Greg Weston has had enough. If taxpayers rather than individual donors are going to fund political campaigns, he argues, “throw[ing] open the books of all political parties and candidates to far greater public scrutiny” is the only way to go—and not just the Torys’ books, of course, but the Liberals’ too. “What other government operation would get away with telling taxpayers it spent $4.5 million—almost 15% of its entire 2006 budget—on ‘other’?” he asks.

Damn-fool Democrats on the march!
The Globe‘s Jeffrey Simpson suggests Hillary Clinton is trying to turn Barack Obama into a latter-day Adlai Stevenson, by hammering away at his purported elitism and abandoning her own history of embracing “policy analysis” in favour of unconvincing populist stances on gas prices, “obliterating” Iran and smearing her opponent.

Also in the Globe, John Ibbitson assesses the possible outcomes in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, and how they’ll affect the superdelegates’ decisions. If Obama wins both, he says, Hillary would likely concede some time before June 3. If Clinton wins both, “the superdelegates might well decide that Ms. Clinton has conclusively demonstrated she’s the more electable candidate” and hand her the narrowest of victories. And if Clinton takes Indiana and Obama takes North Carolina, as expected, then the superdelegates will have to think for themselves—and quickly, for the good of the party. (Dangerously, given Ibbitson’s and every other pundit’s record in this campaign, he neglects the possibility that Obama might take Indiana and Clinton North Carolina, as well as the chance of an Armageddon-esque asteroid strike on South Bend.)

All this intrigue is silly, the Toronto Sun‘s Peter Worthington contends. “By being too smart by half, the damn-fool Democratic party has made itself look both incompetent and corrupt by having superdelegates second-guess voters instead of trusting a simple majority as Republicans do,” he writes. It leads straight to a “cesspool of … in-fighting” within the party, he argues, all of which is allowing Clinton to chip away at Obama’s once-insurmountable lead.

If we order the foie gras, will anyone share it with us?
Alberta’s dead ducks ha… oh God, those poor ducks! Sorry. Damn it, we promised we wouldn’t cry. Just give us a second. Okay. We’re okay now. Alberta’s dead ducks have, the Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe suggests, “forced people to ask, what sort of place is the Aurora tailings pond that it could kill off so many birds who did nothing more than light on its lagoon-like liquidity?” Dead ducks forced people to ask that, did they? Not the ostensibly “grotesque abnormalities” in fish caught downstream, health complaints from local human beings, or the “outrageous carbon emissions and … enormous amounts of water and natural gas” used to extract oil from the tar sands? Not the fact that aesthetically speaking, as Colby Cosh put it, the mines “make for a convincing portrait of hell on earth”? Either Canadians are much stupider than we thought, or much smarter than Yaffe believes.

The Calgary Herald‘s Don Martinwins lunch on us—the pâté to start, we think, and then the confit de canard—for being the first Megapundit to say he doesn’t give a fat damn about all these dead birds. “Had the Syncrude grovel and government investigations of the incident been aimed at possible consequences for Cree and Dene populations living downstream,” he argues, Stephen Harper’s utterly bizarre description of the event as a “terrible tragedy” might have been fitting. But it wasn’t. It was aimed at ducks. Enough already.

Duly noted
Andrew Cohen, writing in the Ottawa Citizen,explores the idea that a symphony is the perfect national metaphor for Germany, in that it’s a densely populated country whose people need to “organize themselves carefully” and “emphasize the collective over the individual” to be successful. He concludes that the metaphor is apt—particularly since the German government funds the arts to the tune of roughly 98 quadrillion Euros a year—and that Germany is an absolutely terrific place.

The Post‘s Jonathan Kay notes a new study showing that Taser blasts to a pig’s chest can lead to quantifiable “stimulation” of the heart muscle—and that when the pigs are “infused with adrenaline” (is anyone else getting hungry?) the risk of cardiac events increases dramatically. But Kay doesn’t think Tasers should be banned as a result. Rather, cops should simply be trained to aim away from the chest. “A significant … number of folks would unnecessarily end up in body bags if police officers had to reach for their service pistol every time they confront a drugged-up lunatic with a broken bottle or a knife,” he argues—or, we’d add, in the case of Robert Dziekanski, when they confront someone armed with absolutely nothing. Training is an issue, no question. But when to use a Taser, not just where to aim it, seems just as pressing an issue to us.

This is why we can’t have nice debates
The following topics are too contentious for federal politicians to risk talking about, pundits allege: free speech, immigration and productivity. And in the case of the Tories, pretty much everything else too.

Rex Murphy, writing in The Globe and Mail, is amazed that the Tories would be willing to “to declare Bill C-10, dealing with tax-credits that support the making of Canadian films, a matter of confidence,” but not even utter a peep about the “noxious blot on the central dynamic” of Canadian democracy that our various human rights commissions have become. But C-10 is about all sorts of other things too, of course—many of them, we suspect the government would argue, far more important than whether David Cronenberg’s Crash would have received funding under the new regulations. (We suspect a crushing majority of Canadians would agree it shouldn’t have, incidentally, but never mind the rubes.) The Harperites aren’t touching the human rights commissions, we suspect, because talking about them makes Canadians go crazy.

We can’t have a debate about the declining fortunes of immigrants to Canada “because political actors are afraid of alienating ethnic groups,” Jeffrey Simpson writes in the Globe. (We’d suggest it’s more basic: talking about immigration makes Canadians go crazy.) But those declining fortunes are a big part of the reason Statistics Canada’s new figures on middle class income stagnation look so bad, he insists. They’d have looked bad anyway, mind you, because of another debate politicians are too scared to have—the one over productivity. “And so we stagnate,” he concludes, “cocooned in our fear, while a few benefit from the current state of affairs, but most citizens do not.”

“All comparisons are odious,” says the Toronto Star‘s James Travers—including, presumably, the one he makes between Canada’s situation and the so-called “Dutch disease,” in which “resource exports … drive up [a] currency making other, often more sustaining, industries uncompetitive.” Things aren’t all that terrible here, he concedes. But, like just about everything in Travers’ universe, the oil boom and the automotive bust are intricately connected to all the unanswered questions over the RCMP’s role in the Conservative election victory in 2006. How? Why? Because politicians are in charge of both the economy and national institutions like the RCMP. (At this point, please imagine the sound of a quickly deflating balloon.)

On the occasion of Brenda Martin’s return to Canada, the Star‘s Thomas Walkom renews his objections to the government’s manifest unwillingness to extend the same degree of help to Canadians like Bashir Makhtal (imprisoned in Ethiopia), Abousfian Abdelrazik (imprisoned in Sudan) and Omar Khadr (imprisoned at Guantanamo). While lobbying Mexico City is a decidedly different thing than lobbying Addis Ababa or Khartoum, the point is fundamentally sound.

The Globe‘s Lawrence Martin angrily recaps the Tories’ most recent crimes against transparency, accountability, credibility and, particularly when it comes to Peter Van Loan, tolerability. He suggests “the fiery Scot, Doug Finley”—one of the two Tory media whizzes last seen fleeing a pack of journalists down a hotel fire escape—may be the guy who convinced Harper “to engage in the gutter politics that has alienated voters.”

Military intelligence
The Globe‘s Doug Saunders plumbs the depths of corruption in Afghanistan, from local leaders skimming hundreds of millions of dollars off the opium trade to the surprising number of disgraced government officials who pop up in similar positions some months later. The question is whether the government of Hamid Karzai—whose family are no angels on the corruption front, Saunders notes—is in a credibility death spiral among its citizens and in the international community, or whether the current state of affairs is a necessary stop on the road to transparency. “Gen. [Dan] McNeill, the U.S. commander of the NATO coalition, likened Mr. Karzai’s position to that of a second-tier soccer club with a weak bench,” Saudners writes. The west can complain about his corrupt appointees all it wants, in other words, but when he “turns to his bench,” McNeill asks, “what do you think he sees?”

Neither “domestic political pressure” nor “the threat of cross-examination” by lawyers for Croatian war crimes defendant Gen. Ante Gotovina could keep Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, one of Scott Taylor‘s primary candidates to replace Rick Hillier as Chief of Defence Staff, from testifying at Gotovina’s trial in The Hague. This is very much to his credit, Taylor writes in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. But some backup would be nice, considering the aspersions defence lawyers are casting on Leslie’s achievements. Eight years ago, after a British general questioned the Canadian Forces’ pluck, “Art Eggleton stood in the House of Commons, shook his little fist and shouted” in their defence. As such, Taylor writes, “one would expect to see a purple-headed Peter MacKay kicking over garbage cans and demanding apologies on behalf of our maligned soldiers … instead of meekly accepting Croatia’s membership into NATO last month.”

Sun Media’s Greg Weston looks at the latest chapter in Canada’s epic quarter-century quest for new helicopters, in which Sikorski has upped the “fixed price” by ten per cent and pushed back the delivery date by four years. Public Works Minsiter Michael Fortier is quite justifiably “going orbital” over the latest hiccup, Weston writes, but sources tell him “most people involved at the time [the contract was signed]—including Canadian defence and contracting officials—had to know Sikorski could never deliver its promised aircraft on time.” If only Jean Chrétien hadn’t cancelled those Cormorants…

Canadian soldiers contribute both to the Canada Pension Plan and to their military pensions, the Toronto Sun‘s Peter Worthington notes, but at age 65 the CPP benefits are clawed back from the payments they get from the military. This makes no sense, he and many others quite logically argue, and ought to be changed.

Eat your sundae while ye may
Lysiane Gagnon, writing in the Globe, begins with some rather pedestrian poll-grazing, noting that “no more than half of the Liberal supporters [in Quebec believe] that [Stéphane] Dion would be the best prime minister”—a phenomenon she terms “the black cherry on the melting sundae” of Liberal support. (Lovely image; no idea what it means. Is the black cherry poison?) She then switches gears and excoriates Canadian voters for installing these ghastly, do-nothing minority governments in Ottawa and Quebec City. Either we “like impotent governments,” she concludes, or we’re “just too indolent to face change.” Question for Ms. Gagnon: How many ballots do you cast in federal and provincial elections? Because weonly get to cast one—and it’s secret to boot. Therefore, we accept no responsibility for the final tally.

Perhaps it all started going wrong for Mario Dumont on election night, L. Ian MacDonaldmuses in the Montreal Gazette, when “rather than giving a gracious and generous speech, calling for all parties to work together in a minority legislature, he delivered a mincing and sombre address.” Voters hate sore winners even more than sore losers, he argues. This presumably explains why the Action démocratique’s polling numbers peaked five whole months later. Hang on a tic—it doesn’t explain that at all! Well, never mind. It’s mostly just a Jean Charest puff-piece anyway, masquerading as a Dumont hit piece for the sake of (relative) novelty.

The Quebec Court of Appeal, “successive governments, federal and sovereignist alike,” federal politicians and “media watchdogs” finally seem willing to consign the ballots from the 1995 referendum to the shredder. The Gazette‘s Don MacPherson is not.

Dead ducks and Nova Scotians
The Edmonton Journal‘s Graham Thomson accuses the provincial government of typically ham-handed crisis management in the case of Syncrude Canada Ltd. v. anas platyrhynchos. It “has been by turn secretive, defensive and combative,” he argues, “when it should have been simply sorry, sorry, sorry.” And what about Premier Ed Stelmach’s point that 30,000 or so birds die every year in the U.S. at the hands of wind turbines, which we thought was a rather trenchant bit of context? Thomson calls it “an oddly hard-hearted defence, akin to dismissing an airplane accident because more people die in car crashes every year.” Of course, it is illogical to go crazy over a single plane crash when so many people die in car accidents, but hey—it’s politics, we suppose. Perception rules. Go back to mourning the ducks, Canada.

The Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe looks at Liberal industry critic Scott Brison’s attempts to fill pages of the next party platform with talk of “pouring money into research and development to promote clean-energy technologies,” standardizing environmental standards across the country, and generally “develop[ing] a cutting edge eco-economy.” If we don’t do it for environmental reasons, she argues, we could at least do it to be competitive in the new world economy.

In search of equality
Where Terence Corcoran took Statistics Canada to task for favouring individual over family income measurements, Lorne Gunter objects to their using income figures that exclude taxes to and benefits from the government. “The fact that the wealthiest 20 per cent in Canada are roaring ahead in some idealized, unreal, statistical Neverland”—i.e., where rich people don’t pay taxes and poor people don’t get money from the government—”is only of significance to people who are eager to feed their own prejudices about the uncaring ‘rich’ and the ‘invisible’ poor,” he writes in the Journal. And he wishes StatsCan would stop facilitating such “liberal-left” nonsense.

As the one-year anniversary of Jordan Manners’ shooting death at a Toronto high school approaches, the Globe‘s Christie Blatchford reports that principals in the troubled Jane-and-Finch area have a very basic request: “Feed our kids.” The neighbourhood is poor, it has nation-leading rates of diabetes and obesity and, Blatchford says, “there’s no mystery about what hunger does to a teen, smack in the middle of a time of enormous physical growth as well as surging hormones.” There’s no “straight line” between hungry teenagers and Manners’ death, she concedes—nor does she quite explain how they’re going to force teenagers to eat if they don’t want to—but it’s certainly true that “a child who is hungry can’t learn.”

The end of Israel?
“Maclean’shas it the wrong way around” when it comes to Israel, George Jonas argues in the National Post. “Israel can survive without being a democracy. It’s democracy that may not survive in the Middle East without being Jewish.” How this relates to the rest of his column—about how Zionism was once popular among rabid anti-Semites—pretty much escapes us, we’re sorry to say.

“We may not see our destiny as inextricably linked with Israel’s,” Lorne Gunter writes in the Post, but “jihadis of every label” do. Thus, he predicts, if we comfy westerners ever gave up on Israel, said jihadis would quickly set about testing our willingness “to give up on Quebec, Mississauga, Michigan, Birmingham and the Paris suburbs.” Luckily, we know very few people who would support a wholesale takeover of Israel by militant Islamists, or who would be inclined to “give up” if such a thing were to occur.

From Indianapolis to Riyadh, via Tel Aviv
“All the hoopla surrounding this week’s primaries” is overshadowing Hillary Clinton’s “truly extraordinary” proposal “to extend the United States’s nuclear umbrella over” Israel and “friendly Arab states as well,” the Globe‘s John Ibbitson argues, likening it to a “Middle Eastern version of NATO.” This raises no end of questions, he notes—for example, is it “strategically appropriate to equate Riyadh with Indianapolis?” Would the rest of the real NATO “be invited to join”? Would these friendly Arab states trust that an attack on them really was the same as an attack on the U.S.? Indiana pales in significance by comparison, Ibbiston suggests

Barrack Obama can claim that Reverend Jeremiah Wright “has changed” until he’s blue in the face, says the Globe‘s Margaret Wente. But she suspects it’s Obama who changed—from a younger man preoccupied with “black identity” who found a home in Wright’s church into a politician who’s only too aware of how such “fiery rhetoric” can confuse his message of “transc[ending] race.” “We imagined that one man might be able to accomplish something an entire society could not,” Wente concludes. “Maybe that’s not his fault, but ours.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/trapped-in-jeffrey-simpsons-cocoon-of-fear/feed/0Wake us up when we get to the Third Worldhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/wake-us-up-when-we-get-to-the-third-world/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/wake-us-up-when-we-get-to-the-third-world/#commentsFri, 02 May 2008 17:09:30 +0000http://macleans.wordpress.com/?p=698Must-reads: Dan Gardner on gas prices and climate change;Terence Corcoran on the income gap; Daphne Bramham on women in Iraq; Colby Cosh on Albert Hofmann.Death of the Canadian …

Death of the Canadian dream
Statistics Canada’s latest figures on income equality send Canada’s op-ed pages into a highly predictable tizzy. Our kingdom for a universally agreed-upon definition of poverty!

Terence Corcoran, writing in the National Post, accuses StatsCan of fomenting “class warfare” with its news release, which he says focused too heavily on the changes in earnings of individual low-, middle- and high-income Canadians since 1980. “Media Web sites flamed with indignation over the growing rich-poor earnings gap,” he notes, but family income provides, in the words of StatsCan’s media guy, “a better picture” of the real situation. (The report itself has plenty of information about family incomes, for the record.) “In 1980,” Corcoran notes, “the lowest 20% of families had income of $21,134. By 2005, the lowest group earned $24,379, for a gain of $3,245 or 15%.” As such, he suggests cancelling the Les Misérables revival.

Alas, the Toronto Star‘s David Olive already has tickets. Heargues that the Canada represented in yesterday’s report—with its 3.5 million residents, 900,000 of them children, “liv[ing] in poverty”—”would be unrecognizable to social-justice pioneers Tommy Douglas, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau.” And he says the “stagnation” in the earnings of middle-income Canadians is nothing short of a “crisis,” suggesting we could soon join the United States among the world’s “richest Third World nation[s].” This strikes us as just a wee bit over the top. And it remains incredibly frustrating to see people like Olive automatically equate the “low income” measurement—the source of the 3.5 million and 900,000 figures—with poverty, against StatsCan’s expressed wishes.

The Star‘s Thomas Walkom, meanwhile, has appointed himself Canada’s first Psychoanalyst Laureate. “In the fictional universe created by Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien,” he ventures, “we would be Hobbits—daring when necessary but otherwise cautious and just a bit square, a people who aspire to a life that is comfortable but without ostentation.” “Untrammelled success” is all well and good for those ghastly Americans, he continues, but “the Canadian dream consists of decent holidays and a house in Etobicoke.” And thanks to the decline in unionization, the government’s failure to tackle outsourcing, and plain old plutocratic greed, as Statistics Canada has now shown us, that dream is dying.

Hey, Saskatchewan—got any spare change?
Just when we were getting used to the idea of being part of the newly indolent Ontario (we haven’t showered in days!), the Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe adds her voice to the chorus arguing that the current equalization formula—under which Canadians are asked to believe “a province that accounts for 40 per cent of Canada’s GDP [is] needy”—is hopelessly flawed. Scrapping equalization entirely is out of the question because it would make Quebec politicians cry, she notes, so “the challenge for have nots [under a modified equalization formula] will be to spend prudently and nurture economies that suit the times.” Alberta, meanwhile, ought to stop “behaving like a drunken cowboy, doling out cash in ways that clearly wouldn’t be sustainable should its oil bounty become depleted or unmarketable.”

Oh, great. Now The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson isimploring the Rest of Canada to care about us. Our decline isn’t a relative phenomenon, he insists—not just the province doing well, in other words, but not as well as Alberta. “Ontario now is falling in absolute terms, too.” The province still absorbs the lion’s share of new immigrants and “bears the brunt of immigration (and refugee) policy failures,” he notes. Flotillas of Chinese automobiles are threatening to descend on Windsor and Oshawa, we still have to pay for massive nuclear cost overruns before we undertake massive new nuclear investments, and health care costs are soaring. Sure, he concedes, we voted for the clowns responsible for all this. But “when a country’s largest province and big paymaster staggers,” Simpson chides the RoC, “the effects extend beyond its borders.”

In today’s performance, the role of Winston Churchill will be played by, um, Stéphane Dion
The Ottawa Citizen‘s Susan Riley reports that Liberal MP John Godfrey—who, perhaps tellingly, is about to flee the House of Commons forever—thinks Canada is ready for an “adult conversation” on just what it’s going to take to tackle climate change. But “changing our habits, paying more for energy, slowing down or halting further oil sands development, [and accepting] job losses in some regions and sectors” will be a mighty tough sell for any political leader, she argues, especially up against “the old politics, perfected by the Harper team, based on fanning fear, provoking divisions and parroting shopworn ideological certainties.” What we need, Godfrey suggests, is someone like Winston Churchill to sell it to us. So, you know, if you encounter anyone like that, please buy him or her a bus ticket to Ottawa.

The Citizen‘s Dan Gardner, meanwhile, has devised a foolproof test to identify politicians who are “pandering jackasses”—namely, whether they claim to support the war on climate change but also pledge to tackle high gasoline prices. “Very simply, high and rising gas prices will reduce emissions,” he writes. “Thus, anyone serious about climate change must support high and rising gas prices. There’s no way around it.” Politicians failing the test include John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Jack Layton and Stephen Harper. A passing grade goes to Dalton McGuinty, and an incomplete to Stéphane Dion, who doesn’t seem to have said anything about gas prices at all. (Alternatively, Gardner concedes, it may just be that “no one pays attention to what he says.”)

Hope under fire
The Globe‘s John Ibbitson explains the unenviable situation in which Barack Obama finds himself in states like Indiana—an underdog, besieged at all times by negativity from the Clinton camp but supported by thousands of young idealists who might very well jump ship if he went negative himself. Further compounding the situation, Ibbitson notes, is that “there aren’t enough of [the young idealists] to counter the dominating power of the middle-aged masses who still control the political process.”

Some of Obama’s more “star-struck supporters” seemed to expect “a miraculous laying on of hands and an instant, complete national cure” to the United States’ racial divisions, John Robson writes in the Citizen. This was fatuous even before Rev. Jeremiah Wright turned out to be an unhinged merchant of hate and despair, he argues, but it’s especially fatuous now that we know Obama, for all his audacious hope, did not find Wright’s sermons “walk-out-of-the-room outrageous.” None of this unwelcome realism need be fatal to Obama’s campaign, however, Robson hastens to add. “Right now [he] is looking like a devious man but, when cornered, a healer,” he concludes. “I’ll take it.”

Duly noted
The Vancouver Sun‘s Daphne Bramham looks at the deteriorating conditions women have faced in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s ouster, and recommends a forthcoming documentary as an interesting examination of whether democracy is compatible with Islam—i.e., whether it can be “something other than liberal and secular.”

Colby Cosh, writing in the Post, looks back at the career of the chemist Albert Hofmann, inventor of drugs used to this day to prevent everything from dementia, obstetrical bleeding and migraines, but best known for his “problem child,” known in the lab as lysergic acid diethylamide.